About Me

I was born April 11, 1959, so I'm more than a bit past the magical "50" barrier that makes me now officially old. I grew up in Park Ridge, New Jersey, which is a little suburban town not far from the New York State border. I dropped out of college after 2 years, having no patience for the forms of academia, but I am a voracious reader. I am currently working at Wal Mart as an electronics associate, and have finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I have gone back to school and gotten a BA degree in Mathematics, with the intention of teaching Middle School algebra and pre-algebra. I am married for eleven years and have a twenty four year old son, am a dilettante writer with a couple of unpublished short stories (viewable as posts on the blog) and a number of unfinished novels; I am a journeyman juggler, once bowled a 290 game, and am a generally talented all-around guy. (Ask anybody who knows me.) I am 5'8" tall, weigh a shade under 200 pounds (at least for the moment) and have dark brown hair that's going grey on those few portions of my head that still have hair.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Too High A Price

The two men stared at each other across the table, undisguised hostility apparent in each face. The prisoner wore an electric-yellow prison jumpsuit; his arms were shackled behind his back, and his legs were shackled to the legs of the chair he sat in. His swarthy skin glistened with sweat from the heat of the blindingly bright naked lightbulb that hung just in front of him. His dark hair was long and unkempt, his moustache drooped as if it shared his exhaustion, and he had a five-day growth of dark beard on his face. His eyes squinted, but he tried to hide his discomfort and to appear unconcerned by the situation. His captor wore a blue United States military uniform. His hands were clenched into fists, quivering with obvious tension as he leaned over his end of the table, glowering at the captive. His collar was unbuttoned, sweat stained his armpits, and his Navy cap was tossed carelessly on the back of a chair just behind him. He, too, glistened with sweat, his blonde hair just as unkempt as that of the prisoner. He was closer to cleanshaven, however; he had only half a day’s worth of stubble darkening his chin, and it was much less noticeable than the dark growth on the face of the prisoner.

“Once more. Where and when is your organization going to strike next? Make things easy on yourself, why don’t you?” His voice expressed many emotions to anyone who cared to listen; primarily, he was furious, but he was also frustrated, exhausted, and behind all of that, perhaps a bit frightened.

“Or what? You won’t let me sleep? You won’t feed me? You’ll make me sit here and smell your sweat and blink in the bright lights for the rest of my natural life? You forget, I was prepared to die in the attack. What can you possibly threaten me with?” The prisoner was unsuccessful in attempting to sound calm, but he was clearly less upset than his captor was. His accent was noticeably Middle Eastern, but not overly hard to understand.

The blonde navy man slammed his hand down onto the surface of the table. His gaze narrowed still further, and he began to move around the table. “You’re probably right. There’s probably nothing I can do to get any information out of you. But by God, I have to try. So maybe beating you to death won’t accomplish anything other than getting me court-martialed, but at least I’ll know that I made the effort.” As he spoke, he approached the prisoner, raising a hand in a fist.

Before he struck, the door slammed open behind him and a commanding voice rang out. “Belay that, lieutenant. That’s not how we do things, and you know it.”

The lieutenant froze in place, fist raised, trembling with the effort to ignore that voice. But his training was too thorough, and he couldn’t bring himself to disobey a direct order from his superior officer, at least not while that superior officer stood looking on.

“I said belay it, lieutenant. You’re dismissed. I’ll take over here.” The captain was tall, even taller than the lieutenant, who was himself not a small man. He was impeccably dressed in a crisp uniform, his cap placed precisely where it belonged on his head, his posture ramrod-straight, his dark hair closely cropped, his square jaw perfectly clean even though it was ten at night, his chiseled features stern but controlled.

Slowly, the lieutenant lowered his arm, still trembling. He turned to the captain, came to attention, and offered a salute. “Sir, we need to know what he can tell us. We won’t get it from him just by asking nicely.”

“And we won’t get it from him by beating it out of him, either. You said so yourself. And if we did, what then? We obey the laws here, lieutenant. We’ll just have to defend ourselves without his information. Brutality is never the answer.”

“Yes sir.” Clearly unconvinced, the lieutenant remained where he stood, standing at attention.

“Fortunately, I managed to stop you before you did something that I’d have to put you on report for. Get out of here, lieutenant. Go get cleaned up and go home. You’ve done everything you could.”

“Yes, sir.” Stiffly, in as perfectly military a posture as his exhaustion could manage, the lieutenant stalked out of the room. When the door closed behind him, the captain turned his attention to the prisoner.

He paused for a moment, as if waiting to make sure that the lieutenant would not be coming back in for his forgotten cap, then allowed his posture to relax. He took off his cap, tossed it onto the table, and sat facing the prisoner, shaking his head and smiling sadly. The prisoner continued to glower, but remained silent.

“I know what you’re thinking, you know. You figure it’s all an act. He was playing the bad cop; I get to be the good cop. Having contrasted his behavior as what you’d expect, I come in and act civilized and rational, and hope to impress you enough to earn some cooperation. I can’t blame you for thinking that; I certainly would, if I were in your position. And the sad thing is, we really DO need your cooperation, so I have to try to win your respect enough to find out what you know. But I don’t expect it to work; you really believe that your actions and those of your co-religionists are right and proper and necessary. I don’t suspect that there’s anything I can say in the next couple of hours that can change that. So let’s just sit and talk for a while for appearance’s sake; then I’ll send you back to your cell and I’ll go home to bed.”

The prisoner looked up, and squinted as the light dazzled him. Seeing his discomfort, the captain reached up and flicked off the light, then stood and walked in the near-dark back to the door, switching on the normal overhead lighting in the room, then returned to his seat.

“You’re right. It won’t work.” His voice was almost inaudible, a dry rasping sound that was painful to hear. The captain poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the table, wordlessly walked around the table to the prisoner, and held the glass to the prisoner’s mouth. Gently, he tipped it to allow the prisoner to drink, and managed to get the entire glass down the prisoner’s throat without spilling a drop. Then, wordlessly, he returned to his seat, placed the glass on the table, and returned his gaze to the prisoner.

“How old are you, son?” His voice was calm and measured, with more than a touch of sympathy in it. The sympathy seemed genuine.

The prisoner paused for a moment, seeming to try to understand what useful knowledge he would be surrendering by answering the question. Unable to detect any trap, he answered. “Twenty two.”

“I’m thirty eight. Been military almost as long as you’ve been alive. I have a son just ten years younger than you, a daughter who’s five. You have any kids?”

Again, the prisoner paused, searching the question he was being asked for sensitive information. Finding none, he again answered. “No. I have a nephew, though. My sister’s son.”

The captain smiled. “Son, I’d ask what makes a young man who hasn’t even experienced fatherhood fanatic enough to try to blow himself up along with a whole bunch of people who he’s never met and who’ve never done him any harm, but I know the answer. It’s because you ARE that young that you can be that fanatical. You’ve been told that those people are your enemies just by virtue of belonging to a culture that your mentors say threatens your culture by its very existence. And you’re too young to know enough not to trust somebody else to pick your enemies for you. Heck, half the men in my command are no better; if I told them to take a plane and destroy a target in “enemy” territory, they’d take that plane and, if necessary, heroically dive it right into the target, blowing themselves to bits but “accomplishing the mission”. Such loyalty can be a marvelous thing, if properly used. I try very hard not to abuse it. I’d tell you that your leaders have abused your trust, but you wouldn’t believe me, so why bother?”

“Indeed, why bother?” The prisoner allowed himself a small smile, but it no longer held the mockery or the hostility that it had held before. They spoke for another twenty minutes, the captain asking nothing that seemed to be sensitive information, and the captain fed the prisoner a small loaf of bread soaked in stew, then saw him returned to his cell.

When the captain returned to his desk, he scribbled a few notes detailing what minor information he’d been able to finesse from his conversation with the prisoner, directed the memo to the department where it might possibly be of use, and left for “home”, once again perfectly military in his bearing.

“Home” was a hotel room; he was assisting here in D.C. for the weekend; his family and his true home were in New York City, a few hours flight away. He could have slept on base, but for the couple of days he would be here, it was just as easy to stay in a hotel, and it gave him a bit of a chance to unwind. He tossed his cap on the bed, unbuttoned his uniform shirt halfway, and poured himself a carefully measured shot of Jameson’s from the bottle on the dresser. He was hungry, but tired enough that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay awake long enough to eat.

“That was quite a performance this evening. Even I was impressed.” The voice came from behind him, well into the room; he was sure that there had been no one there a moment before, and no one could have gotten there from the door without walking right past him. He whirled and saw a man of medium height and build, a reddish face, dressed in an expensive-looking business suit, with short hair and arched eyebrows, two horns like those of a young goat at his temples, and a forked tail trailing behind him. He wore a sardonic smile, and seemed totally at ease.

“How did you get in here?” The captain’s service pistol was in his hand and pointed unwaveringly at the intruder, who seemed not the least put out by that fact.

“Such an unimaginative question, Captain. Surely it’s apparent that I can go anywhere I please?”

“Don’t give me that. Anybody can buy a devil costume, even if it isn’t anywhere near Halloween. Put your hands up and don’t move.”

“As you wish, Captain.” The intruder raised his hands as if surrendering, and then, suddenly, was gone. No puff of brimstone, no flash of light, just gone. The captain whirled, searching the room for the man who’d been there only moments before. The room was empty.

“Really, Captain Stone, it gets so dreary having to make these demonstrations whenever I want to do business, but I suppose it is a necessary part of the experience. But can we dispense with the silliness now?” The voice came from behind him, halfway across the room from where the intruder had been at first. The captain whirled, found his opponent, sighted his gun squarely on the man’s midsection, and fired.

The intruder never flinched. There was no way that the shot could have missed, not at that range; the captain was, of course, an excellent marksman. But there was no result of the shot; not only did the intruder show no signs of injury, but there was no damage to the room; the lamp behind him was untouched, no hole appeared in the bland, unmarked wall of the room, there was no sound of a ricochet. It was as if the gun had fired a blank. The captain fired twice more, with the same lack of result.

“Really, captain, you can’t kill evil with a gun. I would have thought that that would be obvious to such a civilized man.”

The Captain slowly lowered his gun. Cautiously, without taking his eye from his visitor, he checked the remaining load in the gun. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with his bullets; if anyone had tampered with his weapon, they’d done it very subtly, and when had it ever been out of his possession long enough for someone to do so? “Okayyyyy….” he shrugged, reholstering the gun. "So maybe you are what you look to be. I’ve never believed in any of that, but I make a point of believing my own eyes, at least to a point. So what do you want?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I have a proposition for you.”

Stone stared at him for a long moment, measuring. “No deal. I don’t know what you have planned, but even if I don’t really believe in souls, if the devil exists, I’m not about to take a chance on selling mine. You’ve got to know that.”

“Nonsense; I know no such thing.” The devil, if the intruder was in fact the devil, smiled jauntily. “But if you don’t want to know how to prevent a major American city from suffering nuclear holocaust, I suppose there’s no need for me to hang around.” And with that, he was gone, winked out of existence as if he’d never been there.

Captain Stone recognized the move for what it was, and resisted calling out for his visitor to return, as was clearly intended. He tried to put the incident out of his mind and return to his preparations for bed. He picked his glass of whiskey back up from where he’d set it when the intruder had first spoken; he didn’t even remember having set it down, but there it was, untouched. He felt a powerful temptation to down it in a swallow and pour another, but decided that he didn’t dare muddle his thinking or lower his inhibitions just now; he set it back down again, still unsipped.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what his visitor had said. He tried for almost an hour to convince himself that it was a fraud, that it was simply a taunt that had no reality, thrown out to tempt him into listening. But there WERE terrorists out there; his activity earlier in the day reminded him that the threat was all too real, and it was everyone’s nightmare that those terrorists might have acquired nuclear technology. Frankly, he was amazed that such a thing hadn’t happened long since. He was reasonably certain that the unwelcome guest was still invisibly present, and if he only spoke a word of invitation, would return bodily. He sensed that he’d regret it if he did, but the more he considered the matter, the more sure he was that if he didn’t, and the threat proved not to be a bluff, he’d regret that, too. Ultimately, he persuaded himself that there was no harm in listening. He could always refuse an unacceptable proposition AFTER hearing it. There was no need to reject a deal, even a deal with the devil, unheard.

As soon as he came to that conclusion, before he even spoke a word of invitation, the intruder was back, acting as if there had been no break in the conversation at all. “So; tomorrow morning, a terrorist will plant a bomb in the heart of a major American city. Millions will die, and the country will take a huge hit financially, and an even huger hit to its morale. Unless you choose to do business with me; in that case, the bomb will malfunction, will be found unexploded and will be defused, and the man who plants it will be captured. Millions of lives will be saved. What do you say, Captain? Is one man’s soul so precious as to be worth allowing the country you love to suffer such a loss? That would seem rather selfish to me; it would seem to me that it would be a rather cruel, heartless…no, SOULLESS thing to do, to allow such suffering if one could prevent it.”

“How do I know that what you’re telling me is true?” The Captain was clearly conflicted; his brow furrowed and his eyes already haunted.

“My dear Captain, I NEVER lie.” The expression on the visitor’s face was frank and open, and clearly showed shock at the suggestion that anything he’d said could be questioned.

“Bull. You’re called the Prince of Lies.”

“By people without the wit to recognize the truth when they hear it, or the ability to face the fact that they’ve made mistakes when dealing with me. No, Captain, I always speak the truth. Not always the whole truth, I will admit. I occasionally shade the truth I speak so as to be somewhat misleading. But you can count on what I say to be absolutely factual.”

“How do I know that? I have, after all, only your word on the matter, and if you AREN’T truthful, then your assurances that you are are hardly very meaningful, are they?”

“True enough. But consider this; we’re considering a contractual agreement. If I fail to live up to my end, the contract is invalid and you will not be held to your end.”

“Not good enough. Suppose I sell you my soul on condition that you prevent that nuke from exploding; it doesn’t explode, the city is saved, you come to collect. How do I know that it WOULD have exploded if I hadn’t done the deal? Perhaps you simply have knowledge of what WILL happen, but no power to affect it. Perhaps there will be no disaster, regardless of what I do. Then I would have sold my soul for nothing but an illusion of having saved the day.”

The devil’s brow darkened. He seemed to grow larger, more threatening. The air in the hotel room became oppressive, almost as if a thunderstorm were brewing within the room. “Do I LOOK like I have no power over events? You know from close experience how much power evil has over the world. You know that the reason you’re even listening to what I have to say is because you’re surprised that the event I’m predicting hasn’t happened long since.” His voice reverberated like thunder.

Then he was back to being a normal-sized individual with a jauntily sarcastic expression on his face. He continued in a normal tone of voice, without a pause or break in the speech, as if his manner had never changed. “Really, Captain, that’s going to be a decision you’re going to have to make on your own. I can’t offer you proof, but I assure you that if you don’t deal with me, a major American city will be destroyed at oh-eight-thirteen tomorrow morning. Search your feelings; you know in your heart that the threat is real. I have no need to make empty threats. I have the power to make evil happen or not happen; that’s what I DO. The question is, are you willing to make a huge personal sacrifice to save millions of people from a horrible, untimely death? To save their out-of-town family members from the terrible loss? To save your country from a terrible blow?

Captain Stone had always been quite capable of decisive action when it was called for. “Very well. Bring out the contract. I’ll sign.”

“Sign, Captain? You’re thinking that this transaction is finalized by your affixing your name to a contract, written in your own blood on a piece of parchment made from human skin? No, Captain, you misunderstand. Signing your name to a contract doesn’t cost you your soul, no matter what that contract may say. Even if I could find a judge and jury anywhere in the country who would rule in my favor, no matter how clear the contract language might be, it still wouldn’t mean anything. I admit, I’ve sometimes insisted on the written contract in the past, when dealing with people for whom it meant something, but even then, it was a purely symbolic thing. No, more than signing your name is needed for you to surrender your soul.”

Stone’s face showed surprise, then puzzlement, and finally curiosity as his visitor made this speech. Finally, he asked, “So what IS required?”

“For you to sacrifice your soul, Captain, you must perform an action so evil, so appalling, so terrible, that you will never again be able to face yourself in the mirror without flinching. So horrible that no amount of rationalizing will ever allow you to think of yourself as a decent human being.” He gestured theatrically, and at his side materialized a small child. The girl was perhaps three years old, with dark, curly hair, an olive complexion, and wide dark eyes. She stared around the room in silent wonder, but seemed unafraid and openly curious. She wore a plain brown flannel shift . “You must rape this child, and then break every bone in her body before finally killing her.”

Stone was stricken. He tried to cover it with anger. “Absolutely not. No. Get out. What kind of person do you think I am?”

The devil smiled insultingly. “I KNOW what kind of a man you ARE, Captain. That’s why I require this; it will change the kind of man you are into the kind of man I want you to be, irrevocably. You were willing enough to sell your soul when it was an intellectual exercise involving nothing more horrible than signing a piece of parchment; what did you THINK it would mean to lose your soul?”

“True enough, but now that you’ve been kind enough to make it clear to me what the price really means, the deal’s off. That’s too high a price.”

The devil shrugged. “If you say so, Captain. If this one little girl’s life and pain are more important than the millions of children who will die, some at the edges of the blast slowly and agonizingly from radiation burns, if it’s more important to you to keep your precious hands clean than to save them, I’ll just have to take what pleasure I can from their deaths. That, and the guilt you’ll feel for having failed to save them.”

“People die and suffer every day.” Stone’s face was contorted in agony as he tried to convince himself of the truth of what he was saying. “I can’t save all of them, not even at the price you’re charging. At least I contribute as little as possible to that suffering. It’s better to accept that fact than to actively increase the sum total of human suffering in a vain attempt to lower it.”

“But it ISN’T a vain attempt in this case, Captain. If you brutalize this one little girl, millions WILL be saved. Isn’t that ‘lowering the sum total of human suffering’ “?

“It’s just wrong. One can’t determine right and wrong by Mathematics.”

“Would it make a difference, Captain, if I told you that she was the daughter of the man who will plant the bomb that will kill all those millions of people?”

“Of course not. She didn’t choose her father; it isn’t her fault.”

“How about if I told you that she will grow up to be a radical fanatic who will very persuasively recruit suicide bombers to attack your country, and the mother of the greatest terrorist of all, who will be the one to finally defeat and destroy Western Civilization? Who will plunge the world into a thousand years of rule by a medieval, harsh version of Islam? Would that make a difference? Just because she’s cute and innocent now, Captain, doesn’t mean that she’ll always be that way.”

Stone hesitated, torn for long moments, his face haunted. “I…I can’t. I just can’t. It’s just wrong. I could, maybe, manage to kill her to prevent all of that, but the rape, the torture, there’s no excuse for it. I can’t and I won’t.”

“So civilized, Captain. You’re a tough nut to crack. Very well, then, if you would sooner see your own son and daughter die horribly than hurt this poor little moppet, I guess I’ll just have to go.” He began a theatrical sweep of his arm.

The captain was across the room in a heartbeat, and immobilized the devil’s arm in an iron grip before he’d even consciously thought. “WHAT did you say?”

The devil smiled an insincerely apologetic smile. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I neglect to mention? The city in question is New York. Your children, your wife, your parents, brothers and sisters, will all be among the millions to die. Does that make a difference? I thought that for such a civilized man as yourself, such selfish considerations wouldn’t make any difference. Surely, if you wouldn’t do what I want to save MILLIONS of strangers, it can’t make any difference if a handful of those victims are actually people you care about personally? If ONE of them is YOUR little girl?”

Stone released the devil’s arm, and sank to a sitting position on the bed, his head in his hands. “It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t make a difference in the final decision, but God help me, it DOES make it much harder.” He straightened, his head coming up with a manic glittering in his eyes. He sprang from the bed, dashing toward the hotel phone. “I’ll warn them! I can’t save everyone, but I can get my wife and kids out of the city.” He picked up the headset, put it to his ear. When he heard no dialtone, he depressed the cradle hook several times in rapid succession.

“I’m sorry, Captain. Having trouble getting an open line?” The devil’s words were calm and his tone sympathetic, but his face blazed with sadistic pleasure. “Perhaps you’d have more luck with your cell phone?”

The captain paused, and, no longer moving with manic energy but rather hesitantly, as if anticipating what would happen, crossed the room to where he’d left his cell phone. Picking it up and turning it on, he seemed unsurprised to see the message “unable to retrieve signal” appear.

He sat for a moment, his eyes unfocussed, his shoulders slumped. Then, the manic energy reappearing in his eyes, he leaped to his feet. He grabbed his cap and his keys from the top to the dresser, and headed toward the door.

“It won’t work, Captain. There isn’t time.” The smile on the devil’s face was smug.

Stone turned in the doorway. “There’s plenty of time for me to commandeer a chopper from the base. My clearance will allow it. I can be in New York in three hours. Load my family on and be back out of there long before oh eight hundred.”

“If everything went smoothly, I suppose that might be true. Alas, your chopper will have some minor mechanical problems. Nothing too severe, but they’ll delay your takeoff for a few hours. You won’t even have time to get INTO New York to say a tearful last goodbye to your family and hold them while you all romantically die together. No, you’ll be airborne, approaching the city but not yet close enough to be within the blast zone when the explosion happens. You will be close enough to get a very good look at the blast, though.”

Stone stood in the doorway, his right hand on the knob, playing with his keys with his left hand, weighing his options, for a long minute. Finally, he shrugged, closed the door and returned to the room, tossing his hat and keys back onto the dresser. He moved as though to sit on the bed again, but as he came within ten feet of the devil, he launched himself at his tormentor, striking out with all of the pent-up fury he could muster. His initial blow was a right hand that impacted squarely with the devil’s face; he’d planned a flurry of follow-up blows, being, of course, an expert in hand to hand combat, but he’d anticipated his initial blow having some effect; when it didn’t, it threw him off-balance, and he was forced to abort the rest of his flurry.

That blow, had it landed on any human being, no matter how large they might have been, would have produced some movement on their part; even if they were braced for it, their head would have snapped back at least an inch or two. The devil seemed to be a rather normal-sized individual, and rather lean and wiry; by rights, he should have been knocked off of his feet and into the wall. But for all of the effect the punch had on him, he might as well have been a granite statue, and Stone felt agony in his hand that radiated all the way up his arm. He was reasonably certain that he’d broken at least one bone in his hand, probably more. Holding his right hand with his left, he sank to the bed again.

“When attempting to fight pure evil, violence only weakens yourself and strengthens the enemy.” The devil grinned, his tone that of a lecturer addressing a backward student. “You see, Captain, there is no ‘thinking outside the box’ here. You have two choices. You commit the vile action I want from you, or you allow your family (and a few million other innocent victims) to die horribly. Those are your only options. What is your choice?”

Stone sat for long minutes absently nursing his wounded hand, his eyes haunted, before he stood and began to undo his belt.

***

Hours later, after it was done, he once again sat on the bed, tears streaming down his face, his tortured face bearing no resemblance to the controlled, self-assured face that he had worn the previous evening. He wondered idly if he’d ever be able to sleep again, and rather hoped that he wouldn’t. It had been some minutes since the little girl’s screams had stopped, but he could still hear them and he was sure that he would always hear them. The wall clock read “8:22”; the devil, smiling widely, picked up the television remote and switched on the set. The reception was poor, but good enough for Stone to hear the announcer, who was apparently giving an emergency news report.

“…a nuclear device was found just minutes ago in the heart of the New York financial district. It had malfunctioned, or it would have exploded before being found. A suspect has been apprehended near the device, and is being questioned by authorities even now…”

“Safe enough, I suppose, Captain. A shame about the child, though. She would have been quite an effective advocate for peace and moderation if she’d only been allowed to grow up.”

Stone’s head snapped up. “That’s not what you said! You said…”

“I said nothing, Captain. I merely ASKED if it would make a difference if I told you that she would be instrumental in your country’s downfall. I didn’t say that she WOULD be, and when you indicated that it wouldn’t make any difference if I did, I let the matter drop. Had you said that it made a difference, I’d have said, ‘What a shame; she won’t be.’ You don’t mean to tell me now that it DID make a difference in your decision? Pity.” But in the devil’s eyes, there was amused gloating, and not a trace of pity.

Stone’s eyes blazed with repressed fury for a moment, but then, slowly, the light was extinguished, replaced with resigned anguish. Then his attention was brought back to the television, as the announcer’s voice rose several pitches in timbre and took on a tone of horrified energy.

“This just in: apparently, the bomb that failed to destroy New York was not the only one planted last night; I have just received a report that Los Angeles was destroyed minutes ago by what has been estimated as a ten megaton blast…”

Stone looked to the devil with all trace of animation gone from his face. “Any others?”

“That’s all.” The devil grinned hugely. “For today.”

***

A week later, New York was destroyed by a nuclear bomb planted by another terrorist.